to ask how much money you have after all your bills

[galaxyplease]

left each month, which you consider makes you a middle income family??

Roughly, after basic bills as Riven mentioned, £2500 a month.

Then out of that come the things like pensions, insurances, private health care, gym membership, golf membership, meals out, new clothes, savings, holidays, magazine subscriptions and so on, all of which could be jettisoned should the need arise (well aprt from the pension).

We have no debts and are currently paying for new bathroom and kitchen out of savings.

This is all down to DH, who earns a very good wage and was brought up to be careful with money. He also gets an annual bonus.

I feel a bit like Cinders sometimes- I was a single parent on a very low income when I met DH and am still a bit at the amount of money this household has.

We are a lower middle income family, our income is about £4200 a month. DH would be shocked at my use of roughly as it is all on a spreadsheet.

We are saving to buy,
rent - 900
petrol to work 200
money for utilities 175 we are in the middle of nowhere so put money into savings for sceptic rank. Oil etc.
Charity 400
food and household varies about 800
sky I don't know I think it is about 50
pensions come out of salary
insurance Haven't a clue,

We try and save at least 800 a month for house
we try and save a few hundred for treats
rest is spent

Daisy Is this really what people see as a low middle income? Cant believe £4200 a month ?
Wish I hadnt gone on this site today i was feeling fairly welthy with spare £300 left from last month
But if we were in poorer countries I would be really rich wouldnt I ? So smiling and treating my old mum to Sound of music at theatre this pm for her 92 birthday.
Got money for the icecream too!!

We are on a low income (£1750pcm inc chb/ctc).

£900 goes on bills/DDs (some of which are extras like broadband/open uni).

£700 goes on variable costs like food/clothes/car/extras which should leave us with £150pcm but I'm not sure what happens to that (eating out ).

I have a v large overdraft but it only costs £5pcm so I have no incentive to pay it off. I aim to keep £500 below the limit, if that shrinks I freak out get anxious and stop spending.

On an everyday level I have enough to buy what I want without having to fret about price tags. But we live in a flat that is too small and have never been on a family holiday together-missing out on these makes me feel broke.

Writing this I'm realising that if we cut the
spending on crap we'd have enough for the big things I want

BTW

WTF is water/pipe insurance?

The only insurance I have (and would ever want) is car (£22pcm).

sceptic rank

We live in a really crappy house where the pipes burst every year at least 5 times. So we have the Direct Line home emergency insurance which covers the pipes (hence the cost of the insurance).

They came out to us on Christmas Eve last year - frankly the amount it costs saves us a fortune.

Honestly you would all laugh at how shit my house is for £1500 a month mortgage - its a 2up-2down with 20 year old double glazing where nearly all the seals have gone, with slugs and damp everywhere and single skin brick on the second storey (so upstairs is basically a shed) but it is of course in the south-east and thats how much shit houses cost (£225,000)

I suppose your perceptions are affected by the people you mix with. Most of the people we mix with have higher incomes than us and yet I would class them as middle income.

Maybe we are middle middle income

After reading this I really dont know where the f**k all our money goes...we have a lot more left over than most it seems.
Although it depends on what you class as 'bills' if I included Food, his child maintenance, childrens dance/swim classes, nan's home and petrol we wouldnt have much left I guess.. Maybe £200 a week bewtween us...

You don't have contents insurance?

I would have thought that was pretty essential.
Obviously buildings insurance and life insurance if you own your home too

whoops that was a reply to foreverastudent, several posts back!!

That sounds a little familiar Laurie. I stood on a slug this morning and we have no double glazing.

Laurie do you live in my house?...

ermm...minus £100...hence the reason my DH has to go back on nights..its killing us

And ideally critical illness, esp if only one works. We have insurance for most things to be honest, I was going through my regular 'excel' budget consolidation process only yesterday oddly enough which is the only reason I know exactly what we have and how much it is off the top of my head! I don't mind how much we have as long as I know, I like to be on top of things.

I thought slugs were just par for the course in older houses. Always come downstairs to slug trails in the morning....

What do people see as a high income ?
I thought before reading this that my income was middle at £34k as a single parent household. Feels ok to me,but not into designer gear etc.
Am glad that Ive managed to pay for garage and house repairs this month.

We live in the South (bloody coastal Dorset) and is ridiculously expensive. So much so DH is currently on RightMove torturing himself with the massive places we could have for the same money in Pembrokeshire...

Yes foueleven I was thinking that we have less money than my post indicates but we pay, horseriding lessons , swimming lessons ang gym membership.

About £400.
Half of that will go on petrol.

We very, very rarely go out.
We eat a lot of pulses.

jaffacake - The whole thing about 'high' or 'middle' income is a piece of nonsense tbh.

So much depends on your outgoings, where you live, when you got into the housing market (if you own a house) etc etc

For example, a family who use relatives for free childcare may be massively better off than a family earning considerably more who have to pay a couple of grand a month on childcare. Or a low income family may be topped up by benefits, whereas a family with a higher income may miss out on any sort of benefits.

When I had two children in nursery, the nursery workers (who I suspect were on pretty low incomes) probably had more disposable income than I did. I am also pretty certain that at various points in my career, some of the part time lower paid staff in my school (eg office staff, teaching assistants) probably had as much, or more, disposable income. From friends working in these positions, I know that, for example, one woman who is a lone parent gets a big chunk of her rent paid, free prescriptions etc etc

So it's not really very helpful to talk in terms of 'middle income' as it often bears no relationship to what you actually have in your pocket at the end of the month!

Violethill, this is very true.

I have always worked professionally and never had any benefits other than child benefit and tax credit.

Just didnt want anyone to think you might get £34k on single parent benefits!

After bills and food are paid, we have maybe 150pounds a month left over. That goes on BB, GB, church offerings and bus fares to visit my mother once a week. There isn't really any left over for fun things or things like haircuts, clothes or shoes for the kids, that's a rob Peter to pay Paul thing.

If anything extra comes up, OH has to work overtime. It's DS3's birthday this month, so OH worked 2 Sundays last month to buy a present ( so working 7 days a week.) DS2 needed new glasses so he had to work 10 evenings overtime to pay for those. DS2 is away to BB camp this week, I had to cancel my fruit and veg box and divert that money to pay for it.

We aren't middle income, though. DH's salary is 15k. We basically live off DS2's DLA because everything else is eaten up by rent, council tax, utilities and travel to work costs. I worry constantly about meeting all the bills. I have debts left from my 1st marriage 20 years ago when my exH did a runner and left me with thousands of pounds worth of bills, they are almost paid off, though, so we should have about an extra 100pounds a month, then, which will be eaten up sending DS2 to college.

I like this thread. My Gran always said that how much you earn isn't important, it's really about how you spend it.

Here's our outgoings:

Mortgage - £640
Service Charge - £65
Council Tax - £99
Mortgage Life Assurance - £13
Pet Insurance - £5
Redundancy Insurance £11
Contents Insurance - £10
Denplan - £12
Electric and Gas - £91
2 Mobile Phones - £25
Broadband and Phone - £28
Water - £20
Petrol - £180
Car Loan - £155
Food inc. Alcohol - £200
Cat Food - £30
Newspapers/Magazines/Coffees/Subway etc - £100

I always round that up to £1800, to allow for a bit of overspend. I pay the insurance for both cars outright with a small bonus I get every year.

There are two of us in a 2 bed flat, running 2 cars (necessity), and with one very very high maintenance cat.

We earn £2400 a month net.

So about £600 a month over. That said, we are desperately trying to have a baby and I would forfeit that extra money in a heartbeat if it meant I could get pregnant.

Higher education costs for kids eat up a lot too. When both parents work, you're deemed 'too well off' for your kids to be able to get the maintenance loan. DD uses her student loan for fees, and works part time to pay for her food, utility bills but it doesn't cover all her rent, so we sometimes have to pay that (£320 a month) on top of all our own outgoings. Oh and she needed a filling the other day so we had to fork out £65 for that (no free dental treatment once you're over 18 and a student). Plus all bus fares etc for our 6th form teenager. No EMA if you work too hard as a parent....

Honestly I do think the 'middle income' thing is a joke in many ways.

It's all relative. My mortgage is over £1.1m so the interest on that is fairly high.

Then I was supporting 5 children at private school from my earnings alone (their father pays nothing), then university fees etc. Currently 2 sets of day school fees and 2 student children to support. The other finances are just too many to list. People tend to increase their spending as they earn more, more life insurance, bigger house thereore higher insurance for it, better holidays. It certainly change radically when I divorced and paid their father nearly £1m because we went from virtually debt free to lots of debts and no help with children.